Tag Archives: hardcore

Asschapel! A mighty band merging heavy metal thunder with roaring, crusty filth! They released a clutch of neat releases but were seemingly little-loved during their brief, explosive lifetime. Ad Fleet (who had the great fortune to see them live ‘back in the day’) and I frequently rue their passing, so when Southern Lord announced a discography it seemed like a fine time to get the lowdown on these Nashville smashers.

Questions are by Ad and Alex, all answers are courtesy of guitarist Dallas Thomas.

So, tell us how Asschapel came about: how did the band get together, what had you been doing beforehand and what was the initial aim?

Asschapel pretty much started when Erik [Holcombe, vocals] and I were living together with a bunch of other dudes back in 1998. We a had list on our fridge of the worst fake band names anyone could think of and ‘Asschapel’ is the one that stuck and actually became a real band…

You hailed from Nashville, Tennessee: a place steeped in musical history and where brilliant musicians allegedly loiter on every given street corner. What (if any) kind of influence did your hometown have on the band or your playing?

Yes we were and yes it is… We all came up from the All Ages/DIY punk scene though, and I would say a collective influence of ours was a repulsion for the pop-country, nu metal and Christian metal that was common in Nashville at the time.

It was always struck me that there was a real fucking intensity to your music: it had this bold, invincible-making quality that makes me think of His Hero Is Gone playing ‘Ride The Lightning’ riffs. Where were you coming from as a band, and what did you want to be/sound like?

You pretty much nailed it. A fusion of crust punk and corporate rock/metal… ha! His Hero Is Gone and From Ashes Rise pretty much paved the way for us to get out of Tennessee. When we first hit the road we kind of got written off a little bit in that scene because of our name, which really pissed us off and looking back made us play more furious and harder as a band.

Despite being rooted in hardcore, the sound, imagery, song titles and lyrics were very metal-focused. I mean, you weren’t CROM or something, but they were still pretty ‘out there’. Was this a serious gambit, humorous/ironic, or were you using this aesthetic to mask something more serious?

Erik wrote all the lyrics so I can’t speak for him, but I feel it is/was all of the above… humorous/ironic/serious and then back again. But I will say it was always a cathartic release for us a band to poke fun at religion, violence and hate. However, when someone comes to you and say they just got back from a tour in Iraq and say that they were listening to Asschapel during a bombing raids it is a different pill to swallow…

Where did you feel Asschapel fit in while you were a going concern? You were your peers and allies?

We didnt really think about it we just went and did it on our own dime. Back in the day, we played shows with Mastodon, Baroness, Kylesa, Municipal Waste, and Black Tusk when they were all starting out. They all got pretty popular and we fell to shit but, hey, that’s the way it goes…

What kind of crowds did you draw? Were you conscious of any sort of dividing line between metalheads and punx?

At the time we were a band, we were half and half with both the punks and metalheads. But towards the end we also attracted people that didn’t like punk or metal.

Ad points out that, in later days, the merging of metal and punk would become pretty de rigueur with all the Japanese and MPDS stuff like GATES, Doraid etc. doing the rounds. Do you think you were maybe a bit ahead of the curve (as opposed to ‘born too late’)?

Yeah maybe. It’s hard to know… When people started finding out about us we were so broke and sick of each other that we broke up…

Who were the shittiest bands/people you had to deal with as a band?

You know I can’t really remember… We were probably the shittiest band and people that other bands had to deal with…Ha!

You covered ‘Raining Blood’ on your Satanation 7”. Bit of a bold move, that. How do you think it came off? Did you try your hand at any other thrash covers?

That was our only cover. It was always a crowd pleaser – here we are ten plus years talking about it!

What do you remember about your European tour? What were the high and low points for you and how were you received in the UK? What are your fondest – or weirdest – memories?

It was all a blur. We did two EU tours and the UK only once. Breaking down in the snow in north Sweden was not fun. Getting to play in Bosnia, Serbia, Macadonia, and Greece was a pretty surreal experience for sure.

What were reactions to you like in the punk press (MRR, Heartattack, Punk Planet, whoever) at the time?

If I remember correctly hit or miss, but usually we were kinda written off for our name and for being a non-political band. Like I said, that kinda pissed us off and made us a better band in the end.

Ad points out that you were touring at a point when it was still pretty common to have not heard a touring band before seeing them. While it was possible to be bowled over by an unheard-band, do you feel that this worked to your disadvantage? You obviously had the hook-up with German label Flowerviolence, but I’m not sure how well distributed you were this side of the pond before that?

Yeah, we were for sure in the last generation of bands to tour without cellphones and GPS! We never had any formidable backing, promo or distro while we were around. We just said fuck it and hit the road because that is what we all wanted to do at the time.

What put an end to Asschapel? Was it a slow death or quick and virtuous?

In my opinion, pretty much what made Asschapel great was what ultimately destroyed it. We didn’t start Asschapel as a business – we were just some pissed off friends from Nashville who wanted to play some catchy thrash-prog-punk. But when the money crunch comes in and everyone is broke and their personal lives start falling apart it’s hard to keep it fun and everyone on the same page… Looking back we would have been a band longer if we would have been little more business-minded and had better luck with vans – we broke down every tour…

What kind of a legacy do you think the band left behind? Is there anything that you would change, if you had your time again?

That’s hard to say so I won’t… But I think the legacy of Asschapel will now be solidified with Southern Lord releasing our discography to expose a new generation of pissed off kids to the Chapel of Ass…

How did the Southern Lord discography come about? Were you pals with Greg at the time, or did this only come about later by virtue of the Pelican connection? What kind of memories did putting the discog together dredge up? Were they all positive?

It’s kind of a long story… But, yeah, positive for the most part to look back 10+ years later with some objectivity and realize how much crazy stuff we pulled off and that people still talk about and care about Asschapel… About Two years ago, our original bass player JRob sent our first cassette demo to our old friend superfan Dan Emery at Black Matter Mastering to clean up which we put on Bandcamp. That really got us Assdudes all talking again. Fast forward about a year or so when Pelican toured, Goatsnake Greg from Southern Lord and I realised we had a mutual friend in Brad Boatright (From Ashes Rise/Audiosiege Mastering) and that, in a nutshell, is what ultimately led to Southern Lord Releasing the Asschapel discography.

What did you all go on to do after Asschapel? How would you say the band informed your latter endeavours, and did the experience ‘teach’ you anything?

Erik went on to play in the Nashville band Hans Condor. Chris the drummer plays in the Nashville band Tijuana Goat Ride. First bassist JRob plays in the Seattle Band Witch Ripper and Tom, the Moog/synth player, went on to play bass in a band called Ayebawl. Second bassist Nygard retired from music after Asschapel and started a family. I moved to Chicago in 2008 and started doing session work for Sanford Parker, started a band called The Swan King and then ended up playing guitar in Pelican around 2011.

S.H.I.T. is a raging hardcore band from Toronto, Ontario. In 2014 they put out three ripping 7”s for three estimable labels: Iron Lung, Lengua Armada and the UK’s own Static Shock. Greg (guitar) and Ryan (voice) were good enough to do an interview with us, and their answers are far better than my stupid, glib questions, so many thanks to them for their time, effort and intelligent responses. You can listen to the band’s music here and keep up to date with their goings-on here.

Tell us a bit about S.H.I.T. What brought you together, and what kind of a racket were you initially aiming for?

Ryan: The band started as a bad joke or some kind of challenge. Greg and I were sitting around drinking one night, probably reminiscing about the corny hardcore bands we were playing in around the early 2000s. Greg expressed his desire to play drums in a band, having no previous experience playing the drums. I told him that it was a terrible idea and he said that I should sing in the band. I joked that the band should be called SHIT, because that is most likely what we’d sound like. We decided it would be a great idea to recruit other friends that had little or no previous experience playing in bands and it was a fucking disaster. Our first couple jam sessions we had zero direction, Greg could barely keep a beat and we all lost interest pretty quickly. I think we sounded kind of like a bad Germs cover band. After a few weeks we decided we’d take another shot at it. This is basically how the current line-up formed. We took a simpler approach this time as a hardcore band and wrote the demo in about three jam sessions. We had all known each other and were friends through hardcore for about a decade. I think we created what we did as a result of this sense of familiarity but also the diverse music tastes/experiences of everyone involved. I don’t think any of us had a real idea of what the end result would sound like until we recorded the demo.

Ok. Much as I dislike asking the ‘band name’ question, what the fuck is going on with S.H.I.T? What’s the rationale? Did you want people not to buy your t-shirts? Were you just hoping to compete with GISM and the various PISSes in the bodily fluids stakes?

Ryan: It can all mostly boil down to “the joke that went too far”. I think a lot of people hate the name and think it is incredibly stupid (a few of them are in the band). While I don’t disagree, I think that this reaction means that it was successful at provoking people to some degree. I think it was ridiculous to name the band SHIT and maybe that played some part in people’s curiosity with it. Making the name an acronym but never explicitly explaining it just furthered the provocation. From the beginning people seemed to love making up their own acronyms for the band, ranging from funny to not funny to completely absurd.

I think the name works and is appropriate as far as modern hardcore punk is concerned. To me, S.H.I.T. represents a place and time where absurdity and sensationalism meet the illusion of greater meaning. Mass media control, celebrated ignorance, self-obsession, a culture of violence and sexual exploitation all play into the illusion. This is life in the 21st century… it’s all just SHIT at the end of the day.

The ever-reliable internet informs us that S.H.I.T. occasionally stands for ‘Sexual Humans In Turmoil’. Ok then. Considering 94% of all music ever is about making the beast with two backs, hardcore, despite the connotations its name might imply, has been a curiously sexless genre. The last few years, however, have seen all manner of bands muttering about man muck and going on about bonking. Oftentimes these depictions are not ‘sexy’ but at least ‘sexual’. What do you think gives? Has hardcore finally hit a delayed pubescent hormone rush?

Greg: See, I’d argue that. There’s been a long history of punk bands that at the very least questioned gender and gender roles. Without diving too far into it, I’d point at Limp Wrist. Martin’s lyrics in that band are incredibly smart and not just for their content but in what that band would do to a seemingly average hardcore audience. Case in point, in what social setting is it normal and widely accepted for people to get that close to each other, to jump and climb on each other, other than hardcore punk? Repressed sexuality abounds!

I have to admit, while I love the 7”s I thought the demo was merely ‘ok’. How do you think the band has grown and developed over time, was there any sort of ‘step change’ for the band and how has the writing/recording process changed for you

Ryan: When we wrote and recorded the demo I don’t think any one of us expected to have much of a positive response or even an intention to tour, we just wanted to do it – to make something. Since then we’ve tried to play as much as we possibly can, anywhere we can. Last year we did a West Coast tour and even got to play the UK. This year we’re doing a Texas tour with Power Trip and playing a festival in Mexico City. I can definitely say that travelling as a band and meeting like-minded individuals abroad has grown my perception and understanding of hardcore punk, DIY culture and how it all fits into the modern social/political/technological landscape. With respect to the writing and recording process, it has been an uphill battle. In 2014, we finally released all the material we had written and recorded the year prior. We have written and recorded ONE new song since. Currently, I think we might be the most unproductive band in existence considering how much we play.

What can you tell us about the three 7”s and the songs on them? Titles like ‘Collective Unconscious’ and ‘Feeding Time’ are weirdly, quietly sinister, so it’d be good to hear what’s going into it all…

Ryan: As I had mentioned before, all the material on the 7″s was written and recorded in 2013 as one session. We had originally toyed with the idea of putting it all out at once as an LP, but ended up breaking it up into three 7″s released on different labels throughout 2014. Regarding the lyrical content of the songs, I tried to take more of an abstract or existential approach to writing I guess. I feel like the human psyche serves as a modern battleground and I’ve always had a fascination with the subconscious, perception and our notions of reality. My intention was to focus on how systems of control affect our bodies and minds as well as how we perceive our environment, ourselves, and other people. I wanted to explore the metaphysical war that is waged on a society that is increasingly self-obsessed, yet lacking in real awareness and real action. We live in an age where the human experience is continually being assaulted and distorted, reality and fantasy becoming more and more indistinguishable to the masses. Nowadays, people seem to value their delusions more than real interaction or experience. I wanted to write lyrics that are relevant to existence in this day and age.

Let’s talk about those vocals. They’re horrible, and make me feel like a paint scraper is being used on the inside of my skull. What are you trying to do to people, and why use all that reverb?

Ryan: The vocal delay effect was added by Jonah when we recorded the demo. I think he decided to utilize it to fill out the spaces in the vocal patterns and create a kind of rhythmic, cerebral chaos. I think it has this kind of psychedelic element to it, which I think is cool.

While I love hardcore, a lot of it sounds the same. And that’s boring. S.H.I.T. doesn’t sound the same. And that’s good. Were you intentionally tried to sound a bit whacked out and ‘out there’, or is that just the way you roll?

Ryan: I think it has more to do with us trying to avoid emulation as a starting point. We never set out to sound exactly like any particular band from the get-go.

I read the interview you did with Suspect Device/Zonked and was really taken with you saying how averse you are to peoples’ fragmenting hardcore down into various micro-genres, as this is something that’s been seriously bugging me over the past few years. Much as I love many bands who effectively define/distil genres (Crossed Out, Discharge, Blitz, whoever…) I’m generally peeved by bands who slavishly try to ape a specific sound, style or point in time. After all, it seems almost silly to start at a band’s end point at the exclusion of all else, and when you slave away at emulating something you often lose some of your own energy along the way. At first I didn’t really know where I was going with this question, but I guess the nub of it is this: how do you go about making straightahead hardcore music which is distinct and different, considering the genre’s parameters and also all the music you’ve consumed yourselves?

Greg: I’d simply say this – be creative. It’s a bit silly to give any more input than that. When you make something, people will like it or they will not. Some people are keen to like things that cohesively merge things they like. Others are keen to like things that sound exactly like something else that they like. There is no true answer. All I can say is that fragmentation of individuals with seemingly like minded concerns is dumb as shit to me.

Toronto seems to have a brilliant and rather incestuous punk rock scene. It’s pretty great. How do you think that such a comparatively small city is capable of generating so much good punk?

Greg: We’re not exactly a small city by North American standards. We’re actually fourth largest. With that being the case, I’d say we produce a comparatively small number of good bands. That said, Toronto is on an upswing and I think, if not this year, within the next few, there will be a remarkable surge of meaningful punk music from here. The number of punk spaces is slowly multiplying. The scene is young and growing. It’s just a matter of keeping it moving forward now.

What can you tell us about S.H.I.B.G.B’s? Where’s the project at, and what was the motivation for it?

Greg: S.H.I.B.G.B’s is essentially a concrete bunker under an industrial strip, in what was once a dejected but is now deemed “up and coming” part of town. If you didn’t know it was there, you probably wouldn’t be able to find it. With the rapid gentrification / condo-ification that’s gone on in the city over the last decade, not to mention the fact that “everyone’s a DJ”, most live venues that would host punk events have been shuttered. In that, we opened our own space. I do not know how long it will last. I do not know what it looks like even a year from now. For now, we’ve hosted a great number of shows and they are getting better and better. We’ll see what the future brings.

I realise this is old news, but I was enormously upset when my Canuck other half told me that Hits & Misses was no more. Where’s your top tip for TO punk vinyl these days? Rotate This?

Ryan: Hits was a great place to buy records and hang out and Pete is a legendary dude. It being gone leaves a pretty big hole as there are no real dedicated punk record stores in Toronto at the moment. Greg operates a small distro at SHIBGB’s and we have plans to hopefully expand that into a shop later this year.

Greg: Rotate This, absolutely. Incredible shop, incredible staff. Soundscapes is great for books. June Records has a nice staff. Other than that, there’s a couple decent used spots that I’ll keep to myself. Every other record store blows.

While many tr00 pvnx have long since turned their back on Fucked Up, I imagine they were a pretty important band for TO’s punk scene. Would you say their success/above-ground popularity has had an impact on people coming to gigs, getting involved, starting bands and all the rest of it?

Greg: 10 years ago, absolutely. When they were coming up within hardcore, people would travel from all over just to see them. As they’ve changed, hardcore has also changed. First, people don’t seem to travel as much these days. And second, here, Fucked Up haven’t been a “hardcore” band for about 5 years now. That’s not to say that they are not involved any more, because some of them very much are. I just don’t think at this point people find their way to a gig at S.H.I.B.G.B’s say, because they just got into Fucked Up.

As well as the standard hardcore document that is the 7” single, you have a few tapes out. Why bother when you can whack shit (S.H.I.T?) up on bandcamp or whatever? Do these tapes represent some kind of totemic, time-and-a-place kind of thing or are they just a throwaway item that can be chucked out quickly and cheaply?

Greg: I don’t know if they are totemic, but absolutely, when this world is a burnt up pile of garbage and aliens are digging through the rubble, we want them to find S.H.I.T. recordings. That’ll never happen with a bandcamp. And really, a band’s physical recordings are very much part of what forms their identity long term. That’s why it should be done. They are testament to effort, time and place. So, maybe they are totemic?

Also, in terms of format, is there any likelihood that there’ll be a S.H.I.T LP, or do you think the band works best in short, terse blasts?

Ryan: I think the likelihood of an LP relies more on our productivity (or lack thereof) rather than a preference to any particular format.

Greg: Personally, I like the fact that the “industry” and dorks look down on you for not having a full length like it’s some sort of important goal to reach. People who are interested in what we do will find us.

What’s next for the band? What are your short-term goals and what, if anything, would you ultimately like to achieve?

Ryan: We have a Texas tour planned with Power Trip at the end of the month, we are playing a fest in Mexico city and have a gig in NYC just before New York’s Alright. We also have a new track being released as a part of a comp put together by Beach Impediment Records. Beyond that, we are going to focus on writing new material this year which will hopefully result in a new release of some sort.

Cowards’ brand of heavy, gnarled, misanthropic hardcore fair near knocked my socks off when I first heard their ‘Shooting Blanks & Pills’ record for Throatruiner. Sludgy without being in hock to sludge ‘tradition’, metallic in the most caustic way and possessed of that numinous sense of believability that’s so hard to come by.

I meant to knock a review and interview together when the LP originally came out. Typically, life got in the way and time passed. Handily, though, Canadian label Secret Handshake have since reissued it, thus making my review and this interview a bit more timely.

Questions answered by the band as a hive mind.

Ok, let’s get the basics out the way first: tell us a bit about Cowards. How, when and why did the band get together?

Cowards: We all got together at the end of 2011 when some of us were completely out of the game and wanted to start something new. What started out initially as an instrumental doom/sludge project turned into what we are now.

There is a real sense of hostility and sickness running through the music. What kind of feelings are you channelling, and why is Cowards’ music so mired in negativity?

Cowards: Channelling might not be the appropriate word, it conveys too much of an esoteric weight. We just write and play the music that best reflects our feelings about the lives we have, what we see, hear and understand.

How does the music you make reflect the people who make it? If we hung out with you, would we find happy, well-adjusted young Frenchmen or are you as unhinged and hostile as your music?

Cowards: The best answer would be both. We’re all pretty much from a middle-class/upper middle-class background, we all have pretty decent education and manners, but in the end, it all comes down to what we have and who we have in front of us. There’s a lot of judging going on on our part, we’ll admit to that, and some of us take great pride in being scary judges of character.

Most of the time it all goes very smoothly, as you might already know, most people invested (really invested that is) in this trade turn out to be honest, passionate and down to earth folks. Really quite a lovely crowd.

But then, then you have the others, who are louder, more visible, full of themselves and ultimately full of shit. Those, we have a hard time making it work with. It happened before, once or twice, but really, not that much. Although when it goes south, it usually goes all the way there.

We’ve stated this before and we’ll gladly state it again as much as needed, we’re no more violent or hostile than anybody else, but we definitely are on the top tier of blunt honesty and this will not make friends with just anybody so easily.

What can you tell us about the LP? What were the circumstances around its creation and what does the title mean to you?

Cowards: The ‘Shooting Blanks & Pills’ LP is an exact photograph of what we were at that time, musically and personally, it is a reflection of the music we had, both created for that purpose and lying around from previous bands as well as some very old ideas.

In retrospect, it does sound a bit odd at times; that collection of songs with different moods, although the vocals make it whole in the end. But if we had to do it again that way, we would.

As for the title, I’m not going to dwell on the meaning although I’m willing to say it is as much a self-depiction as it is a tongue-in-cheek, below-the-belt jab at people we know, their lifestyles and their loud-mouthed, half-assed opinions on everything.

How did things change for Cowards between ‘Shooting Blanks & Pills’ and the ‘Hoarder’ EP? Do you think the band has evolved at all?

Cowards: The one thing that changed is, in the most unglamorous way, we became a band, for real. Previous to recording ‘SB&P’ we had never played together, not even spend real quality time, the five of us, and apart from the one guy who set it up, most guys didn’t really know each other that well. It almost led to our demise after our very first show, some of us realising they couldn’t stand the others.

That quickly changed after our first mini tour alongside ELIZABETH when we quickly rose to becoming probably the funniest pack of hyenas ever to hit the road.

Musically, we tried to do things different with ‘Hoarder’, as far as process go, other than that, business as usual. The only thing we try to achieve is not to be too redundant with ourselves and play the music we’d like to listen to.

Was it a conscious decision to merge the various sounds you have running through your music (hardcore, sludge, black metal etc.)?

Cowards: Others have said it before and as it turns out, it’s true, for us at least, we just wanted to play the music we like and would like to listen to. It just so happens that we like a whole lot of things including but not limited to those genres of heavy music and that’s just the way it all came down on us.

Of course it became obvious and conscious once we were done recording but we’re fine with that.

The defining bond being that it had to be very, very angry.

For some reason I think Cowards have a very urban sound: it’s very much ‘city music’. Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with Paris, what goes on there and how you think it influences you as people and musicians?

Cowards: For some reason nobody ever told us that before and for some reason it is a shame because if we ever did something consciously as far as the music goes, it was, and still is, to try and keep it very urban, so thank you. We are from the city after all and have always found it funny/depressing those bands who try and sound from the swamp of Louisiana, as if their best friends were alligators when in fact their best friends are the concrete pavements they work day in day out…

Having said that, we don’t have a particular relationship with Paris, we just live there. Some of us love this city, others hate it but we all share a sense of belonging, whether we like it or not, to The City, not particularly Paris, it probably could be any city, it is the urban atmosphere that appeals to us.

Considering you’re our closest neighbours I find it weird that we over here in the UK don’t seem to have a clear picture as to what’s happening in the underground scene over there in France. I’m aware of individual bands and labels (Throatruiner, Ratbone, Solar Flare etc.) but have no idea how cohesive it all is. What’s your view, and how do you think Cowards fit in?

Cowards: First off, don’t feel bad, apart from the very handsome guys at Oblivionized and their friends we shared the stage with when they had us over, we had no idea of what was going on in the UK, except for a strange feeling, that proved to be true, that British bands have a very professional feeling and extraordinary talent and skills, more so than most French bands, including us of course.

As far as cohesion, we couldn’t tell you. We do have some friends here and there, but we’re not feeling much love and/or interest for us, except for the indefectible support of Matthias (Throatruiner Records) and Alex (Deadlight Entertainment). That’s fine because we do have good allies outside France, be it only Pedro and Vitor from RVINS records in Portugal.

Whatever the reason, we’re not part of the scene so to speak. The funny thing is that we know people know us, because we hear them blabbing away, it most recently appeared that we are racists, violent, arrogant and destructive posers, how would anyone want us to be part of their scene? Haha. You’ve got to love when people talk, and who knows what we’ll be in a couple months, we’re anxious to hear it.

How – if at all – has France’s punk rock history (be it Kickback, the Stonehenge Records stuff of the 90s or whatever…) affected your outlook and the way you do things as a band?

Cowards: Except for Kickback (who we ripped off everything good we have apparently), and French black metal (Deathspell Omega to name one) we don’t have much interest for it all.

You toured over here earlier in the year – how did it go? Any strange or weird tales to recount?

Cowards: It all went very smoothly. People in France told us it would be hard: no audience, no money, no selling merch, no place to sleep, no food. They were oh so wrong. Zac (Oblivionized) set it all up perfectly, people showed up at every show and we ended up coming home with some extra cash, which is always good. Like we said before, lots of very good bands, very talented and so young it’s sickening. Plus Wetherspoon’s. Can’t go wrong with Wetherspoon’s every day.

Weird tales… Let’s see… We were invited over by a girl and her boyfriends, plural, to score some (which turned out to be cheap garbage) and she ended up fucking very loudly in her toilets with one of the dudes, while the other stayed with us, helpless. She claimed she was a Super Mario Champion and that she probably could make us all come under five minutes. Needless to say we were not interested. That’s the weirdest tale from our UK trek, so you see, it all went very smoothly.

What do you all do outside of Cowards?

Cowards: We try and make an honest living. One of us feeds people, another is a craftsman, the other teaches stuff…

What plans do you have for the band’s future? What’s happening next and how do you think Cowards will evolve over time?

Cowards: It just so happens that we’re going to hit the studio for five weeks beginning of October, to record the follow up to ‘SB&P’ and as soon as that’s done we’re going to set up a Euro tour with our friends in Oblivionized. We’ll try to go back to Portugal, maybe hit Spain, we wish we can come back in the UK sometime this year too.

‘SB&P’ has been reissued by Secret Handshake records up in Canada for North America and we also hope we can go all the way there and make new friends. Or foes.

As for us evolving, let’s pray we can get more and more people talking shit about us, because, let’s face it, there’s no such thing as bad press.

COLLECTIVE: Greetings, Bafabegiya. Kindly let us know who you are, let us know what part you play in the band and anything else about yourselves that you think we may be interested to learn. How did the band start and how has it evolved over time?

B: Bafabegiya consists of Tim Osipenko on bass, Jawsh Hageman on drums, Justin Morales on guitar, and Joe Ferguson does the vocals. We are all very different and passionate individuals who have a lot of love for DIY culture. We have all been in and are a part of several other musical projects in the Reno DIY scene including Crucial Attack, Dog Assassin, Rad Times, Disconnect, This Computer Kills, Both Blind, No Gods No Girlfriends, and a handful of others. The band started about 3 or 4 years ago after This Computer Kills (Jawsh) broke up, and Crucial Attack (Joe) went on a long hiatus. I (Joe) asked Jawsh if he wanted to start a HC punk band and he was into it and he asked Justin if he wanted to play some tunes. We asked our friend James to play bass in the band, and he did so for the first few shows, and I think he may even be on the split demo tape with Dog Assassin that we did. James quit and we asked Tim (Dog Assassin) to join. That has been the lineup ever since. The sound I think has changed quite a bit since we began writing music. We started out playing some fairly straight forward HC punk tunes akin to Minor Threat or 7 Seconds, but we progressed quickly and started writing some more intricate and different stuff pretty soon thereafter.

COLLECTIVE: What the heck is a Bafabegiya? It sounds like something that might’ve crawled out of some Norse folktale or something…

B: Bafabegiya literally means “Those Who Die Dancing” in Xhosa, a language from South Africa. During the reign of white apartheid in South Africa, non-white folks and their supporters began to rebel in many significant ways. The main organization of resistance in South Africa during apartheid was the ANC (African National Congress), who continue to have significant political power there today. During the beginning of the resistance, there was a group of radicals who wanted to take a more direct-action style approach to dismantling the racist power structure that existed there at the time. They were called Bafabegiya, and they advocated for sabotage and bombings while the ANC staged boycotts and walk-outs. While both types of actions were important in taking out the racist regime (at least symbolically) in South Africa, it should be noted that the course of action that a person or group takes to rectify social injustice should be appropriate for the situation. Today I see a lot of people burning candles and singing songs in front of federal buildings to protest the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, or maybe once in a while they will march in the streets and make a symbolic gesture through art to “stop the war” or something of that nature. They take this course of action while literally thousands of innocent men and women and children are ravaged by the weapons of mass destruction that their tax dollars go to purchase. I unfortunately don’t see a lot of people taking real direct action to stop and injustices in the world. There are some, and they are those who die dancing.

COLLECTIVE: You guys have a somewhat odd sound (for this day and age, anyway…) that I always end up describing somewhat hamfistedly. There seems to be a crust influence at work but also something more akin to what a lot of early-to-mid 90s hardcore bands (like, say, Born Against or Iconoclast) were doing. Is there any particular “sound” you’re aiming for? How do you think the band fits in with the current hardcore topography?

B: As a band, I don’t think we have ever really tried to fit into any specific musical genre box or tried to categorize ourselves. We have never thought “hey lets try to sound like this or that.” We just write the music that we write, and it comes out however it does. We have a lot of very different musical interests and influences, and I think that our sound reflects a lot of that diversity. So, I would say that we are not trying to aim for any specific sound, per se, we are just a band playing heartfelt music with passion and drive. People have compared us to bands like Econochrist, Born Against, and even Tragedy, but I think we maintain a pretty unique sound. As for the current HC topography, I’m not really sure that we fit in at all. There aren’t many bands out there that sound like us, and we don’t really fit in, at least musically, to current HC trends, as far as I see it. We have played with a lot of different bands and in a lot of different scenes, and we get different reactions everywhere we go. It just depends. We like playing and touring with bands that we get along with, and we have toured with a lot of Spacement Records bands like Arabella, Disconnect, Greyskull, and Acts of Sedition. I think we get the best response in the more active and politically concerned scenes because we talk a lot about issues that our lyrics deal with. I like to talk in between songs about what the different songs are about and engage the crowd in discourse before and after we play. We always bring a zine distro and usually have books for sale in addition to the records and things that we sell. So, that is one thing about us that in a lot of ways, sets us apart from a lot of other bands touring in the DIY circuit, we always have info and are always willing to talk about things that are going on in our lives. It’s important to us to make sure that DIY HC punk is more than just music. It’s community building, communication, and friendship. Meeting kids, and making sure that we are supporting each other in our struggles.

COLLECTIVE: Like the music, Bafabegiya’s lyrics are smart and to the point. However, they tend to veer schizophrenically between notes on personal empowerment or making life better for oneself and more bitter tirades on politics or the various stupidities of humankind. How do you balance these two perspectives and not let one override the other? Does the type of song you write depend on what side of the bed you get out of in the morning?

B: The lyrics that I write usually deal with something that I have been thinking about recently or that I have been learning about or reading about or talking about in my daily life. I don’t come to practice with lyrics or anything like that or even decide what a song is going to be about ahead of time. I’ll usually listen to a song that the rest of the band is writing and practicing and then start thinking about what I want to write about based on how the music is making me feel and what I’ve been thinking about recently or what has been going on in my life. I have never really given much thought to balancing personal lyrics with more political lyrics or anything like that as the lyrics have always just sorta come based on the circumstances at the time. They’re all personal for me as they’re all topics that I feel are important and have direct relevance to my life. They are also political because those are usually just the things that I am thinking about and discussing with friends and family and colleagues. I think that in a lot of ways people here have really lost the ability to engage in civil discourse and communicate with one another. Our society is almost completely obsessed with the spectacle that the media has become and we’ve lost a lot of what makes us human. This goes across the board, from the corporate media convincing us that we should purchase unnecessary things through to kids spending all their time on Myspace worrying about how many virtual friends they have, rather than thinking about building real relationships with real people, be it within the scene, their communities or elsewhere. I think that if more of that discourse or those ideas come across through music in a DIY type environment, that we can begin to transform society into something that is a bit more conducive to a real community.

COLLECTIVE: The split with Acts of Sedition seems to be heavier than your previous releases – is this the kind of avenue you’ll be pursuing in the future or just the result of a weightier production? Also, what’s the deal with that Spanish-sounding arpeggio that ends one side of the 7” and kicks off your side of the LP?

B: The songs that we have written since the split with Acts of Sedition have been a bit heavier than our other releases, but the songs are also becoming longer, more complex, and stemming from even more diverse influences. We don’t have many solid future plans right now, but I would imagine that we will be looking for a better production with some of our new songs. We have never really focused on being a “heavy” band, but some of our newer songs definitely have heavier parts as well as more dynamic structures. As for that “Spanish-sounding arpeggio,” I think that we just really liked the outro from our “Those Who Die Dancing” EP and it fit well with the first song on our split with AOS, so we just put it there as well. We often play “Better Dead than Domestic” and “Molded” together live, so it makes for a pretty epic bridge between the two songs.

COLLECTIVE: All the releases I’ve seen from you folks thus far have this rather distinctive artwork going on that’s heavily stylized and also rather creepy (particularly, it has to be said, the split LP, what with its skull-faced-monk-thing billowing smoke and shot full of arrows…). How does it tie in with what you’re all about and why have you plumped for the imagery you have?

B: Our good friend Jeremy Forson (www.jeremyforson.com) has done all of our artwork. He grew up in the Reno scene and moved away to Oakland to go to art school at CCA (California College of Arts) to hone his skills, though he’s kept really involved in the Reno scene. Jeremy has done all of our record covers, inserts, t-shirts, stickers, buttons, etc. For the artwork, we send Jeremy the lyrics and music and he puts together the art based on how he feels the music should be depicted – we don’t give him any direction or tell him what we want, we pretty much just leave it up to him. Then we usually have the covers screened locally and put together the inserts and stuff ourselves. It’s a DIY fair all around with many members of the Reno scene contributing.

COLLECTIVE: Additionally, all the releases are super DIY and a whole lot of love seems to have gone into them. How important to is the concept of “DIY” to you as a band? What’s your take on the direction a lot of supposed hardcore bands/labels seem to be taking, almost tripping over themselves to affect a gloss of corporate schtick or at least employing similar tactics to the majors?

B: The DIY ethic is everything to this band. We started Spacement Records as a collectively run, band-centered label to put out ours and our friends records. We do as much as we can ourselves and have tried to make sure that our releases are more than just the music; we want them to be solid with artwork, lyrics, explanations, production, and plenty of contact info if kids want to get in touch and talk or ask questions. What we can’t do ourselves, we ask for help from friends and local businesses to give us a hand. We are very fortunate to live in an amazing community full of caring individuals who are willing to help each other out when the time comes. We want kids to grow and learn from the DIY experience that they have through attending our shows or picking up our records or whatever. We want to make sure that kids know that we are not any different than them and that they can start bands, write zines, start a record label, distro books that they like, put on shows, make a stencil, or do whatever their hearts desire. To us, DIY is what we do, there is no other way.

As for the direction that other HC bands / labels have been taking, in the way of creating a more mainstream audience, or going for a more glossy production, that’s fine for them. If their goal is to sell a bunch of records and have a booking agent and have six t-shirt designs and three hoodie designs, then that is fine with me. If they want to make their version of HC watered-down, unthreatening, and more “entertaining” in order to appeal to a wider audience, then that is great for them. It’s just not HC anymore though – it might be some good tunes, but that’s about all. They can sell their CDs at Best Buy or whatever other corporate chain that they want. It’s not for us. We want HC to be first and foremost, sincere, heartfelt, passionate, and a direct threat to the status quo. We will never compromise our ideals or our passion for the record industry or for capitalism. We make the music and art that we love, and if other people want to check it out, then that’s great. We never got into the DIY HC scene to become popular or to make money – we just want to stay true to what we believe and make music, art, friends, and have a good time doing it.

COLLECTIVE: Could you tell us a bit about the scene you move within? For some reason I get the impression that the Spacement bands and their associates must be part of some neat close-knit little family – is this the case or am I way off with my idealistic assumptions? Who do you recommend we keep our eyes peeled for in the future?

B: The Reno scene is a pretty unique place to have grown up in and to be in right now. There is a rich history of DIY HC punk starting back with bands from the early 80’s like Jack Shit and 7 Seconds. Bands that influenced us more directly were from the more recent line of local HC bands such like Gob, Fall Silent, and Iron Lung. So, as you can tell, the Reno scene has never really had a distinct sound or genre that it’s famous for or anything like that, but there has been a long tradition of really good bands that have come from this small town. Most recently, Reno has seen a lot of really good bands get together, write some great tunes and record a bit, maybe tour a bit, and then call it quits. There have just been so many bands start out strong and break up. I think that there are a lot of kids in this scene that aren’t really willing to work really hard to keep a band going for an extended period of time. It’s really unfortunate too, because there is really a lot of talent here. Most of the Spacement bands and people associated with the record label and venue make up a pretty close-knit family. Many of us work on the same projects in the community, attend shows together, host vegan potlucks, volunteer at Sound and Fury Records, go on tour together, help out with Food Not Bombs, and just try to keep the scene a positive place for all kinds of kids to become a part of. Really awesome stuff is happening in Reno right now, and a lot of kids in the scene have really stepped up and become involved in their community. Right now kids here are working on a lot of projects such as Holland Reno (www.hollandreno.blogspot.com), The Reno Bike Project (www.renobikeproject.blogspot.com/), Reno Food Not Bombs (www.fnb.spacementreno.com/), The Great Basin Community Food Co-Op (www.greatbasinfood.coop/), The Bridge Center (www.thebridgecenter.net), Rainshadow Community Charter High School (www.rainshadowcchs.org), Spacement Records (www.spacementreno.com), and Sound and Fury Records (www.soundandfuryreno.com). Some kids help out the scene in other ways by helping book shows, recording bands, hosting info nights or skillshares, silkscreening shirts and patches, writing zines, opening their homes for use as venues, etc. Of course, there are a lot of kids in the scene who don’t do much in the way of community activism or really become involved in the scene much at all aside from attending shows and the like. I think you’ll find that kind of thing in pretty much every scene that you come into contact with. As for who to watch for in the future, in the extended network of the Spacement family, I would say keep an eye on Acts of Sedition (Oakland, CA – www.actsofsedition.com), Greykull (Tacoma, WA – www.crimethinc.net/urbanpirates/bands/greyskull), and any bands that form from the breakup of Parallax (Provo, UT – www.goldenspikemusic.com). In Reno, it looks like Fatality (www.spacementreno.com/artists/index.php?ID=13) is really trying to get out there and tour a lot, X-Wing (www.spacementreno.com/artists/index.php?ID=17) is still hanging on even though members have relocated to Southern California, and various Bafabegiya member projects are forming. Members of Bafabegiya, Acts of Sedition, Greyskull, Burial Year (www.alonerecords.com), Bullets*In (www.bullets-in.tk), and The Coma Recovery (www.failedexperimentrecords.com) are currently starting a regional band that has a lot of potential. Who knows what the future holds?

COLLECTIVE: What plans does Bafabegiya have for the future? Do you have any specific goals or objectives for the band and, if so, how are you going to go about accomplishing them?

B: We have no concrete plans for the future. Things are pretty much up in the air right now. We have been on somewhat of a hiatus since we got back from our summer tour and haven’t done much in the way of future planning. In the past we have talked about touring in Europe and doing a lot more in the way of touring the world, but things have yet to unfold.

COLLECTIVE: Ok. I guess that’s it – thanks a heap for your time and patience! Please feel free to add any final words of wisdom in the blank space below…

B: I think I’d just like to end by encouraging anyone reading this interview to really think about making punk a threat to society by becoming involved in things that are going on in your local community. Instead of keeping our passion and our ideas locked up in basements and garage venues, let’s bring what we have taken from the HC punk scene and integrate it into our daily existence in the community. Talk to your friends and families who might not be associated with the punk scene about things that are important to you. Become informed, read books, zines, check out the news, see what’s going on in the world. Knowledge is power. Go!

Thanks for the interview. Feel free to get in touch with any further inquiries… bafabegiya
269 Wonder St.
Reno, NV 89502bafabegiya@riseup.net

This interview is from a long ol’ time back, roundabouts the time ‘Fingers Become Bridges’ came out. Lawks.

Collective: Generic introduction: herein you will give a brief, insightful run-down of the band that is Tiny Hawks – roles, reasons and rationale.

Gus: I’m Gus. I play the drum kit, and electric bass. Recordings have some upright bass on them. Art and I befriended about four years ago when I moved to Providence. Our interests in life, politics, and music brought us to the idea of playing together. At that point, it had been quite some time since I had played music with people, and it worked so well with just the two of us. Our differing personalities really bring us together. I think we compliment each other in our approaches to songwriting. I mean, we are both generally happy people, Art is a bit more outgoing than I am, which is most apparent at shows. We both have a genuine love of the music we make and the friendship therein. I appreciate the opportunity to do Tiny Hawks and hope it brings real inspiration to those who listen. It must be said, we are just a band. But music is the great motivator, and if it keeps motivating you, why stop?

Collective: Tiny Hawks have a pretty original sound, especially in a day and age where you’re pretty much guaranteed to come across a clutch of bands tilling the same soil. What would you say has helped shape the band’s sound? How has what you’ve done in the past shaped what you’re doing now? Did you set out to achieve any specific goals with this band?

Gus: Thanks! I think it’s kind of a bummer how marketed genres have become. Even in DIY/punk/hardcore, whatever you want to call it. There is an obvious divide. I mean, people like what they like., but when you start to feel uncomfortable and judged at a show or walking down the street because you don’t have a certain sound or aesthetic it’s a bit unsettling. I think back to stories I’ve heard from late 70s early 80s when punk had no real guidelines – it gave people the freedom to really voice what they were about, for better or worse. I think at first, we just wanted to rock out? Now, having so many influences and a couple of years behind us, it’s morphed what we are. We just write, musically, what feels satisfying to us and evokes what we are trying to get across. We are not trying to mimic a sound or appeal to any certain person. I wouldn’t say we have a clear direction as to where we are going as a band and I really enjoy that.

Art: In thinking about shaping sound, I think we bring similar inspirations and motivations from bands and music we’ve both loved and I think we try to play what comes naturally rather than try to mold songs into some formula or pattern. I haven’t really played in a formal band before this aside from a band in high school (albeit meaningful!), and I have been playing guitar alone for a long time, some songs that ended up being some of these songs. I think we pay attention to feel rather than approach, assessing what viscerally feels right rather than what sounds “good”.

Collective: Am I right in thinking one/some of you were in Spirit Assembly? What would you say have been the major changes in the emo/hardcore landscape since then? Which have been for the better, and which for the worse?

Gus: Yes, I used to play bass in that band and it still blows me away when it gets mentioned. It was an exciting time then, 93-95ish. A true movement that I was completely enamoured with. It shaped so much of who I am, but, I took what I experienced/learned from that and moved on. It’s real unhealthy to live in the past, to idealize those days as being better than what you have now. You have to push for growth and change. If you don’t, things get stagnant.

Collective: A lot of the folks who would’ve been your contemporaries in the 90s emo scene have either upped and left music entirely or moved onto less traditionally punk pastures – (e.g. country, indie, electronica…). What has made you stick with punk rock – what’s the lasting appeal? Could you see yourselves ever just jacking it all in and forgetting this particular piece of your past?

Art: Punk rock. The lasting appeal continues to be in how people stretch it, what we do with it when the song is over, and what those songs did to bring us to where we are. The connections and people I have met over the years through punk circles (zines, music, politics, fests etc.) continue to inspire and enrich my life and I feel very lucky to be a part of it all. Punk has made and ruined and confused a whole lot of people it seems. It’s a positive signifier as much as a way to alienate. I don’t really see myself losing the drive to be participating in or playing music that would be considered punk. There is a lot of hope left in it, a lot of fearlessness, and a lot of room for it to keep changing and keep it challenging.

Gus: Punk has an energy. That word alone has so much weight behind what it has stood for… and still does for a lot of us. We both listen to such a vast collection of styles of music, and all have had their little part in what we are. But the statement punk has made (of course, I’m not talking about big money “punk”) will have a lasting effect on my life’s decisions and philosophies.

Collective: Are you still as pissed off about things as you were when you first started making music, or have your focuses changed?

Art: Are we still pissed off? I think anger can be a pretty amazing force if used the right way. We’re pretty much overwhelmed with enough things in the world today to level us on a minute by minute schedule – so how to deal with it all, how to use the anger there or frustration to make something or be something more than that, to turn that adrenalin into something positive? Phil Ochs said, “you must protest, you must protest, it if your diamond duty, ah, but in such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty.” Sure, anger is there, but I think anger implies negative reactions. Remaining critical and open and responsive and resolute and with a certain amount of courage seem to be stronger impulses.

Gus: As you get older – I will be 30 this year – I think you find ways of bringing your ideals into everyday life, how you live it. Simple things like how I treat other people, knowing your neighbours, trying to stay informed on what the hell is going on. Yes. I am pissed off about the US occupation of Iraq, I am pissed off about South Dakota deeming abortion illegal! There are so many incredibly frightening actions by government and power figures… most of which are against what the people want. It’s all so overwhelming sometimes, you start to wonder if we can bring change. It’s an anger with hope that we need more of, and I say that as much for myself as much as I do others.

Collective: Tell us about your relationship with Moganono – how did it come about? It seems to be one of those reliable, understated labels standing out like a beacon in a sea of shit. Does the label guy cherrypick all these great bands (Anton Bordman, Kolya, Ettil Vrye…) or is he just lucky enough to have found himself sitting amongst a slew of neat acts with broadly similar ideas and ethics? What is the hardcore scene like where you hail from and what kind of bands do you generally play with?

Art: My personal relationship with Moganono goes back a long time to me being 14 and living in the Merrimack Valley and going to shows featuring bands whose members would later be in Moganono bands, and whose brother team were very open and friendly to me. I grew a lot through knowing Peter and Mike, through their examples in how they made genuine efforts in punk circles and their own lives. They used to book a fest every year as a breast cancer research benefit called “tin can full of dreams”, whose overarching value and richness was not wasted on me. It was a family thing, the Zetlans representing behind the refreshment table, the brothers making things work, and bands and people growing ever tighter over the years, finding each other at these events, and building relationships that would last. I am inspired by the memory and the people, and as a label, am always impressed. Peter keeps putting effort and love into bands of friends and releases that are timeless and hand done with care, and I feel so honoured to be a part of that history. He is a great person, and his friends and the music they create can speak to that fact. I don’t think I could generalize about the music scene here in Providence, there are many bands I love, who continue to push boundaries and experiment, and there is an earnest dedication to creating something personal and unique and honest that is awesome to see/hear. We’ve been lucky enough to play all different kinds of shows with bands playing all different kinds of music, so it’s nice to be a part of a community of music/art makers that continue to challenge us in that way – to not settle.

Gus: Pete is a wonderful, wonderful person. I met him through Art, when we started playing shows. He always struck me as genuine. He’s extremely dedicated and cares about what he is doing. It’s kind of like he’s the keystone in creating this little family of New England bands with similar views, for no other reason than a genuine interest. There is so much music going on in Providence. It’s a very diverse scene that has been through many hardships the past couple of years. Losing warehouse spaces (living and otherwise) and increasing rents are forcing people to keep things on the DL. There are now a handful of show/art spaces and only two or three are DIY. I think there is an underlying fear of those spaces being taken away.

Collective: Your lyrics are often kind of oblique, though can be picked apart for a sense of meaning. Is there anything in particular you’re looking to impart or are your songs more an opportunity to vent or try to understand particular situations for yourselves? Would you mind going into any detail as to what “Four Days After Ariel Was Shot” is about?

Gus: Not to discredit myself but Art is much better versed than I. He writes most of the lyrics where I write more straight forward words like “Daniel Striped Tiger”. I guess for me it’s a venting of sorts, trying to tell a story or put across and idea. That song, in particular, was at root a motivational. As is my part in “Whenzy”.

Art: The songs lyrics aren’t oblique on purpose, I think in the lyrics I write I just end up being a little indirect. Less venting, more trying to understand particular situations, think around things, pay attention. “Four Days…” was about living in Lawrence, Massachusetts after a killing had occurred in my neighbourhood and walking home from work through the park one night when a cop pulled up to me, not to arrest me, but to offer me a ride home because it wasn’t safe for me there. I think it was a critical moment in me thinking about privilege and whiteness, and the power of those things, their hidden meaning and weight. I loved my neighbourhood, met many of my neighbours and worked in a local charter school with kids living down the street from me, and was part of a small dysfunctional collective there. I felt part of a community and was not blind to certain aspects of it that made it “dangerous”, but tried to accept them as things that exist in a society that sets them up to be there in such a way. Killing or mugging or stealing were not exclusive events, like in most cities, and how you interpret or deal with those things ends up marking how you live within them. Are they constants or negotiable? Can you stop them? When does a neighbourhood start turning into a gated community? Many easy answers are found when someone can throw out “gang related” after a killing rather than looking at the root of these kinds of conflicts or issues. And I am no better prepared at handling those issues than anyone else, and so, the song is about that, being hit by all of it kind of profoundly and still coming up with not many answers. And no, I did not take the ride home.

Collective: What does the term “Fingers Become Bridges” mean to you? Why choose it for the name of your record?

Gus: I’ll let Art carry the torch on that one.

Art: “Fingers become bridges”. I like the thought of bridging things, finding connections and meaning and relatedness between disparate ideas and worlds, and personalizing it, seeing yourself as integrated, part of a web, connected and capable of building bridges, seems pretty empowering to me. You make what you want to see.

Collective: What are your plans for the band, both immediate and long-term? Is there much on the horizon by way of gigs, releases or grand schemes?

Gus: just want to play music and feel good about what we are doing. My hope for the band is that we keep progressing and stay true to ourselves… maybe inspire people outside of music too. We are planning a US tour in May/June to the West and back. Our new record “People Without End” will be out in May on Corleone records. We may be heading to Europe in the fall if all goes well and we can pull ourselves away from personal obligations to work we love.

Art: Plans include getting the new record out, going on an almost month long tour out to the west coast, hopefully going to Europe within the year, playing more guitar and bass songs, feeling less stressed out and more in control, recording a split with Fiya, figuring out how to use the fourtrack, having an updated and cohesive website, being better about lyric sheets, keeping it punctual when talking between songs, learning new ways to play music, trying trying trying.

Collective: Any last words or snappy closing comments? Use this space…

Art: Thank you very much for your thoughtful questions! I hope these weren’t too long winded for answers! Please write if you’d like: po box 1652/Providence/RI.02901. Thank you!